It comes after a Financial Times report found at least six students worked 11-hour days at its iPhone X plant in Henan province.

The practice breached Chinese laws preventing children from working more than 40 hours per week.

About 3,000 students were reportedly hired to work at the Zhengzhou plant.

Apple said the secondary school students worked voluntarily but they “should not have been allowed to work overtime”.

Both the tech giant and Foxconn have said the interns were “compensated and provided benefits”.

“Apple is dedicated to ensuring everyone in our supply chain is treated with the dignity and respect they deserve,” the firm said in a statement.

“We know our work is never done and we’ll continue to do all we can to make a positive impact and protect workers in our supply chain.”

The Foxconn Technology Group, which operates an internship programme at the Chinese factory, told the BBC in a statement that it took “immediate action to ensure that no interns are carrying out any overtime work”.

It added that “interns represent a very small percentage” of its workforce in China and that the breach of labour laws was inconsistent with its own policies.

The Taiwanese firm reportedly hired the students in September to keep up with demand for the new iPhone X, which Apple has described as being “off the charts”.

The iPhone is critical to Apple’s product line and makes up more than half of its revenue, with more than 46.6 million phones sold between July and September this year.

Its latest model, the iPhone X, was launched on the 10 year anniversary of the iconic smartphone and is Apple’s most expensive handset yet, retailing for £999.

Apple and its suppliers have come under fire several times in recent years amid accusations that they have failed to protect workers at Chinese manufacturing facilities, where some allegedly lived in overcrowded factory dorms and worked excessive hours.

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Source: BBC

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Peterson now claims her father has been fired as a result of her video. In a tearful video, Peterson explains her father violated an Apple company rule by allowing her to film the unreleased handset at Apple’s campus. Apple reportedly requested that Peterson remove the video, but it was clearly too late as the content spread further and further.

The video itself may have seemed like an innocent hands-on, but it did include footage of an iPhone X with special employee-only QR codes. A notes app was also shown on the iPhone X in the video, which appeared to include codenames of unreleased Apple products. Filming on Apple’s campus is strictly prohibited, so filming an unreleased iPhone X is a definite rule violation.

We’ve seen similar dismissals in the past. A Microsoft employee was dismissed after his son posted pictures of the Xbox 360 before its release. The Apple engineer in question had worked at the company for around four years, building the iPhone RF and wireless circuit design. The Verge reached out to Apple to confirm the dismissal, but the company has not yet responded to a request for comment.

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Source: The Verge

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According to the latest figures from eBay, there were more than 1,200 listings posted on its site within 45 minutes of the pre-sales opening at 12 midnight PT today.

We ran an “iPhone X” search now, and found more than 4,480 live listings, the majority being “Buy It Now” offers instead of auctions.

eBay also tracked a big spike in “iPhone X” searches on its site.

From midnight until 1 PM ET, there were 36,555 searches for iPhone X, the company tells us.

While it’s too soon to say what the average selling price is — that will require more sales data over a longer period of time to be accurate — eBay says most of the listings appear to be in the $1,500 price range.

For comparison’s sake, the iPhone X starts at $999 for the 64GB model, and goes up to $1,149 for the 256GB model — so there’s definitely a mark-up in place. (The $1,500 price range appears to apply to the 64GB iPhone X, from what we’re seeing.)

And let’s not forget that some people have posted their iPhone X  pre-order confirmations for sale at prices that can only be chalked up to “wishful thinking” — like tens of thousands of dollars or more.

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Source: BBC

Good luck getting someone to pay $60K for the new iPhone, dude!

The benefit to shopping for the phone on eBay is that you’ll be able to get it quicker than the ship times Apple is now able to promise, even if you’re paying more. You’ll also have a good selection of devices to choose from by carrier, finish or storage space.

As for the lack of inventory, Apple would like you to believe it’s all demand-related. The company today issued a statement to that effect, saying:

We are thrilled to be taking orders for iPhone X, the future of the smartphone. We can see from the initial response, customer demand is off the charts. We’re working hard to get this revolutionary new product into the hands of every customer who wants one, as quickly as possible. We will keep accepting orders online, and iPhone X will be available at Apple retail stores on Friday, November 3 starting at 8 a.m., as well as from our carrier and retailer partners around the world.

However, it’s not possible to know if whether it’s really high demand that led to the quick sellout, as Apple did not share how many devices it had available at launch. Some analysts, however, had said they expected only two to three million would be on hand ahead of iPhone X’s November debut. To put that into context, the iPhone 6 sold more than 10 million units its first weekend. (Apple no longer releases first weekend sales figures for new iPhones.)

eBay will continue to track iPhone X sales over the weekend, and we’ll update if and when the company has more data to share.

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The company’s shares, which have fallen steadily since it announced in early September it would launch two iPhones within two months, rose nearly 3 percent in response.

Pre-orders for the much-anticipated 10th anniversary phone started from 12.01 am PT (0701 GMT) on Friday.

“We can see from the initial response, customer demand is off the charts,” an Apple spokeswoman told Reuters.

“We’re working hard to get this revolutionary new product into the hands of every customer who wants one, as quickly as possible.”

The company’s website showed delivery times pushed out to five to six weeks for the phone, compared to an initial plan of Nov. 3.

IPhone X’s launch follows weeks of concerns among analysts about the production of the new phone, which for the first time includes new facial identification software to replace the fingerprint used on previous phones.

Analysts have cautioned that production of the phone was below target, due to difficulties in producing the TrueDepth camera system, which houses sophisticated cameras and sensors making it possible to unlock the phone using Face ID.

Wireless carriers in the United States and Canada have reported slow third-quarter customer upgrades. While some expect a pickup after the iPhone X goes on sale in November, others cautioned that phone’s $999 price tag could weigh on demand.

Major promotions on the iPhone X from U.S. carriers have yet to materialize, and in some cases, the offers have been even less generous than what was available for the iPhone 8, said Walter Piecyk, an analyst at BTIG in a research note on Thursday.

He noted that Sprint Corp’s iPhone X promotion of $350 in savings for trading in an eligible device was the most aggressive but still lower than what it offered for last year’s launch of the iPhone 7.

Shares of Apple were up 2.9 percent at $161.96 in morning trading in New York.

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Source: Reuters

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The club, who won the Champions League in May, is worth an estimated $3.44bn (£2bn), Forbes said.

The top three slots are occupied by football clubs, with Barcelona in second place at $3.2bn, and Manchester United third, with a value of $2.81bn.

Forbes calculated the value of the teams based on equity, debt and stadium deals.

MLB baseball team the New York Yankees were in fourth spot, valued at $2.5bn.

In fifth place is NFL American Football team the Dallas Cowboys, worth $2.3bn.

Mets out

NFL teams fill 60% of the top 50 slots, occupying 30 places.

The 20 non-NFL teams in the top 50 include six from MLB, eight from football, four from NBA basketball, one from the NHL ice hockey league and one from Formula 1 motor racing.

Forbes calculates that the average value of the top 50 teams is $1.34bn, an 8% increase on last year.

Baseball team the New York Mets are one of three teams that dropped off this year’s list of the top 50.

The other two to fall out of the list are also familiar names, the Oakland Raiders from the NFL and F1 team McLaren.

The World’s Top 10 Most Valuable Sports Teams of 2014

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Source: BBC

Information from Forbes was used in the article

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